To discover the truth of Vanessa's murder, I was going to have to ask a lot more questions to a lot more people, and much more firmly. Many of them weren't going to like the subject matter and a select few of them would undoubtedly soon begin to make my life a living hell.
I wasn't long left in suspense. I also found my jacket Saturday morning right on top of Vanessa's grave mound as if she had been lying right there on top of it before sinking into the rain sodden ground.
*******
By the lunch whistle on Monday, I was flat out of a job -- fired by the silo foreman 'for my own good'. Several other helpful former coworkers urged me to get my ass out of the county - fast. The sooner the better. I just couldn't do that... I'd made a promise that I intended to keep, even though I was sure that it was going to cost me dear.
I spent Tuesday in the County Records office where the clerks and I played a complicated and tiresome game of 'keep-away'. I wanted the see the autopsy and court records for Vanessa's case and they claimed they didn't have anything on her at all, blaming instead the county coroner. I knew better; I'd met the coroner on Monday evening and he swore to me that the county sheriff had interrupted him before the autopsy had been barely started, taking away all of his preliminary notes and telling him that the case was already closed.
What little I did learn convinced me beyond a doubt that Vanessa had been murdered alright. Allegedly she had been found floating one morning in a small stock pond behind Eli Granger's house. The words 'accident' and 'mishap' had been used a lot by the sheriff's men and by the county judge who indecently ruled her case shut and closed a mere three hours after the discovery of her nude floating body. The coroner knew otherwise; normal drowning victims don't show signs of a recent severe beating or have loud and quite distinct finger strangulation marks around their neck.
Vanessa had been murdered, and the evidence instantly pointed to her sometime boyfriend, Ralph Granger, Eli's son. Remember that name, Granger. It shows up a lot at every level of the local county government. A Granger was County Sheriff, a Granger was Chief County Clerk, another was the County Judge, and so forth. You get the idea. Rural southern nepotism at it's finest. The Grangers had run Gilbreath County for nearly fifty years and took their dime or quarter upon every single dollar that was earned inside the county line. Most of the regular folks were getting more than a bit upset about this and were pretty much itching for some change, but the Granger family kept enough goons in deputy uniforms to keep the piece... and drive off the troublemakers.
By Wednesday evening, I was certified as county troublemaker #1. The word had gotten around fast that I was asking embarrassing questions about young Ralph's stormy relationship with Vanessa. Some of her co-workers were beginning to open up to me and I was starting to hear some rather interesting stories about Ralph usual courtship rituals with young women like Vanessa that included drugging, forcible seduction, outright rape, and boatloads of physical and psychological abuse afterwards to keep their women in line.
As a side industry, he and his friends were involved deeply in a side operation of methamphetamine manufacturing and trafficking. Since I didn't have a job anymore, I was using a bar table at Frankie's to meet my reluctant witnesses. The quiet somberness suited the mood and the grimness of their stories. I was not getting a lot of different pieces of the puzzle, and it was a dark and unhappy one.
Not long after sharing drinks with a nice young gal who was a former co-worker of Vanessa's, two rather impolite sheriff's deputies came bursting into Frankie's and quickly grabbed me and hauled me right out of there, with my boots scraping a furrow behind me through the decades old layers of peanut shells that covered the floor two inches deep in some spots. My captors didn't even have any questions for me, other than my name. Once I'd identified myself they just commenced to beat the total crap out of me. Once I was satisfactorily bloodied enough to be booked, I was admitted to the presence of his august immenseness, the County Judge, who seemed to be holding a special night court session just for me. In less than five minutes, I was declared guilty of being a vagrant, since I no longer held a job, and fined for the full amount of money that they found in my wallet and for good measure then sentenced to a week in jail. Luckily, I don't keep my savings in my wallet, I've got a little hidden hidey spot in my truck where I keep my important stuff.
Life on the road can sometimes be a little hazardous.
**********
To be honest, this wasn't exactly my first time in jail, but this was the first time that I'd actually been more or less innocent. I'd been wild as a kid, hanging out with gangs of kids older and mostly braver than me. I had nothing to do with crimes involving the use of a gun, but just about anything else was fair game, especially petty theft. I did drive a getaway car once for a couple of casual friends who shot and nearly killed a convenience store clerk, a kid just barely older than me. I hadn't known that my friends were armed or I wouldn't have agreed to help them.
I knew that some sort of line had been crossed and I didn't like it and I never worked a job with those guys again, but I still kept and spent the $225 that was my share of the loot. Two weeks later I got caught trying to jack a car and my minor crime spree on the streets was all over. The judge offered me five years of hard time up at State Prison, or four years in Army Infantry as a front line grunt. I took the Army, and it was the best decision of my life. The service was the family that I'd never really had before and I pretty quickly got my shit straightened out and became a model soldier. I spent my time on the DMZ in Korea and then did a tour in the Big Sandbox before getting out to start to make an entirely new life for myself. I'm still not quite an angel, but I've tried pretty hard to stay on the right side of the law ever since. Since I'd left the service six months ago I've worked and travelled through seven states, looking for someplace that I could call home, but nothing has seemed quite right to me yet.
Now, finding the law here to be on the wrong side of truth and justice was a bit of a surprise to me.
******
I managed to survive my week in prison, but I was astonished that my ribs and teeth all survived the stay intact, albeit extremely loosened. I was beaten, semi-starved and humiliated in nearly every way possible, but I kept focused and grit my teeth and endured. 'Pain is just weakness leaving the body,' one of my old Army physical training instructors had told me. Quite true. They were not yet willing to kill me, so their abuse and pain was just making my will that much stronger than theirs. I would survive... and someday soon they would pay.
When my week was up my things were returned to me and I was given clear and extremely precise instructions to leave the county and never return. I did leave the county, but just for two days. I caught up on my sleep and tried (utterly in vain) to interest any of the other surrounding county newspapers or sheriff's officers in my story.
Some folks had some sympathy for me, and one neighboring sheriff actually bought me dinner while listening to my story, but the end result was the same. The Grangers were too powerful to go directly against, especially with petty claims. They would need something big - big enough to bring in the Fed's like a major civil rights investigation, or even the DEA, to handle the rumors of major methamphetamine distribution in that county. They wanted the Grangers' gone as much as anyone, but first there needed to be some sort of solid proof to get an investigation kickstarted.
'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I heard this repeatedly from nearly everyone I spoke with. They weren't unwilling or disinterested... but they needed something firm that they could hold onto and use to bring in the Fed boys running to their assistance.
Somehow, for Vanessa's sake, I had to find something tangible and real.
************
Late Friday evening I turned the truck around and drove back into Gilbreath County. I intended to go to Frankie's to quietly have a few beers while my brain tried to think of a clever plan. Instead I soon found myself driving past the ice house and travelling down that gloomy rural country road that lead to Vanessa's cemetery. I began willing myself to not look towards the roadside, hoping that I would miss her in the dark cold and rain. Funny, it seems that it had rained nearly every day I'd been here. I was also beginning to think that I'd never see the sun or ever become warm again inside. Surely she wouldn't be waiting for me to come again tonight?
When I saw Vanessa's ghostly figure waiting for me on the side of the road I knew I was well and truly trapped with no possible escape. I needed to make an iron-clad case for the Feds to investigate so that Vanessa could have justice... I never guessed that it would be my own case.
